Nearly everything we know about what George Lucas had planned for a third Star Wars trilogy (a.k.a. Episode VII, Episode VIII, and Episode IX) has come from second-hand sources. The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams revealed that Disney wanted “to start from scratch and tell a story that was the continuum.” Also, in The Art of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, we learned that in Lucas’ vision, Luke would have required a more significant role in The Force Awakens, one that would’ve seen would’ve seen him train a “new disciple named Kira (later renamed Rey).” Mark Hamill also divulged that in the “vastly different” outline for the trilogy, “George didn’t kill Luke until the end of [Episode IX], after he trained Leia.”

Lucas has been reluctant to reveal anything about Star Wars since the Disney merger, minus some unfortunate phrasing, but he gave a hint of where he was heading in the companion book to James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction TV show.

“[The next three Star Wars films] were going to get into a microbiotic world. There’s this world of creatures that operate differently than we do. I call them the Whills. And the Whills are the ones who actually control the universe. They feed off the Force… If I’d held onto the company I could have done it, and then it would have been done. Of course, a lot of the fans would have hated it, just like they did Phantom Menace and everything, but at least the whole story from beginning to end would be told.”